The Second-Best Bed

A Poetry Tale about William Shakespeare, told by Hello Doggo.

When William Shakespeare signed his will in March sixteen sixteen, he remembered almost everyone. His daughters. His sister. His godson. Money to buy rings for three old friends from the theatre, Burbage, Heminges and Condell. Ten pounds for the poor of Stratford.

And his wife of thirty-three years, Anne? One line, squeezed in between the others, like an afterthought. I give unto my wife my second best bed, with the furniture. Furniture, back then, meant the hangings and the bedding.

That’s it. The only thing the will leaves her in so many words.

The gossips have had centuries of fun with that. In the eighteenth century the scholar Edmond Malone decided Shakespeare had cut her off, not with a shilling, but with an old bed. Throw in the wedding — Anne was some eight years older, and, by the dates, three months pregnant at the altar — and you can see where people’s minds went.

But here’s the other reading. In a house like his, the best bed was often kept for guests, and the second best was the one a couple actually slept in. Quite possibly, the marriage bed. And the law usually gave a widow a share of the family property for life anyway, so perhaps he didn’t need to spell it out.

Insult, or love token? Nobody can prove it either way.

One early transcriber misread the line as my brown best bed, which would have settled everything.

Shakespeare once wrote, to love that well which thou must leave ere long. What he left her was the bed.